Commentaries

Previous

Next

Vegas Strong isn’t just a hashtag. It’s proof of what we’ve become

By Geoff Carter, Las Vegas Weekly

October 14, 2017 at 10:00 am

We were not ready. When news of the terrorist-led events of September 11, 2001 reached Las Vegas, we reacted the best we could: We shut down the airport, organized charitable events and vigils, draped the casinos in the colors of our nation’s flag. In the weeks that followed we went about our ways in anxious isolation, one eye unblinkingly trained on the skies overhead. Many were laid off in the resulting tourism slump. We put on a brave face, but inwardly, many of us felt helpless.

The Route 91 Harvest festival shooting is a different kind of horror than the events of September 11, but the dread feels familiar, even if this time our eyes aren’t fixed on the heavens; instead, we’re forced to consider the dangers concealed in the previously benign corners of our own town—the windows of our casino towers, the open expanses of our festival grounds.